


The Value of Life

by Tarlan



Category: The Abyss (1989)
Genre: Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-20
Updated: 2006-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:50:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Aliens are not the only ones who had to learn to value human life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Value of Life

Virgil 'Bud' Brigman held his wife close, breathing in the scent of her, his eyes closing in sheer joy and relief. He thought he would never see her again, never touch her again... never kiss her again, but here she was, safe and warm in his arms. He looked over his shoulder to the beaming faces of his remaining crew, feeling a momentary sadness for the ones he had lost; good friends all. They were shaking their heads in both awe and happiness, stunned by the events of the past few days and, no doubt, pleased that they, too, had survived. However, as he smiled back he noticed that, one by one, the grins fell from their faces, their eyes focusing on something behind him. He felt Lindsey go stiff in his arms and he pulled away. Turning, Brigman expected to see one of the angel-like creatures that had saved his life.

His welcoming smile faltered. Not something; someone... but not just anyone.

****

Lieutenant Hiram Coffey took another hesitant step forward, bewilderment vying with fear on his handsome face. He was gazing about him at the massive purple and white towers stretching high into the azure sky; at the huge ships and submarines perched precariously on the surface of the alien craft as if in dry-dock. Ahead of him was the Deep Core exploration platform left high and dry in the middle of an ocean. Eventually, his sea-green eyes alighted upon the small knot of humans; familiar faces looked back at him.

Nightmare images swept through his mind; intense feelings of betrayal and paranoia. He had felt so out of control and yet, at the same time, everything had seemed so crystal clear to him. He *had* to destroy the invaders at all costs; could remember priming the warhead to deliver a nuclear strike into the Abyss.

He glanced down at his left forearm. He had dreamed of carving lines into his own flesh but the skin was unbroken. It *had* to be a dream, and yet it had all seemed so real... and if it was a dream then, perhaps he was *still* dreaming. He shut his eyes tight, reopened them but the images were the same.

Why couldn't he break free of this nightmare?

****

Bud Brigman moved slowly towards the other man, hands held open in a non-threatening way, a soft expression that, hopefully, portrayed reassurance on his face. He prayed, for once, that Lindsey would keep her thoughts to herself and stay out of this. The man was sick; a victim of pressure induced psychosis. He needed help, rather than the ranting and condemnation of others.

As he grew closer Brigman noticed that Coffey had lost that wide-eyed, dangerous expression that he remembered from their earlier confrontation at the moonpool. The man looked more than a little confused - and he looked tired, with dark patches under his eyes. Coffey was swaying; visibly trying to keep upright, desperately trying to keep those eyes wide open. Brigman drew closer still.

The last time he saw this man they were poised on the edge of the Abyss with only a few feet of water and the domes of the cabs separating them. They had stared across the small distance at each other, and he had seen a momentary glimpse of sanity behind those eyes before Cab3 slipped over the edge and away, into the darkness. His imagination had supplied him with images of Coffey's fate, seeing the dome crack under the increasing water pressure moments before the cab imploded. The human body, being even more fragile, would have been crushed instantly.

He gave Coffey a tentative smile and held out his hand to the, obviously, deeply shocked man. His own experience with the aliens had caused him to believe in the impossible. He had survived; why not Coffey, too?

"Am I dreaming?"

"Do you want to be?"

A small voice answered, like a frightened child.

"... yes ...."

Brigman pulled Coffey into his arms, felt the man's head lie, heavily, upon his shoulder. He felt the lieutenant go limp, finally succumbing to the sheer exhaustion he had seen on he man's face and, awkwardly, picked Coffey up and turned to walk back to the others. His eyes met Lindsey's and he smiled, seeing the love and compassion sparkling in the dark depths. He could see another group of people approaching rapidly from the Explorer and, as he turned to walk towards the new group with his heavy burden, Lindsey fell in step behind him, her small hand touching his arm as if in need of gentle reassurance that they all lived.

****

 **27 Hours Later  
USS Navy Frigate  
Atlantic Ocean**

"It's not a coma."

"Then you *can* wake him up."

"Yes, but..."

"We need to debrief him."

"And he needs to sleep. And, frankly, unless this is a life or death requirement, then I have authority here."

It was obvious from the implacable look on the Navy doctor's face that he was not going to back down without an order from someone far higher in the chain of command. The SEAL commander sighed and ran a hand through short, dark hair.

"How long?"

"I would prefer he came out of this sleep naturally, let his own body tell him when its ready to face the world. Whatever happened down there affected him deeply. We already know that he had all the symptoms of pressure induced psychosis; shaking hands, slurred speech, increasing paranoia. Although there is no sign of any imbalance *now*, that doesn't mean he wasn't sick. Hell, *everyone* from the Deep Core platform came up to the surface without requiring 3 weeks decompression - and they are all fine - so those creatures must have done something to protect them."

"So... how long? The Pentagon is asking questions that only *he* can answer."

The doctor relented with a deep sigh, realizing that the commander really didn't give a damn about the others, or about his theories regarding the aliens.

"If he doesn't wake up of his own accord by this time tomorrow, then I'll try waking him."

The SEAL commander's mouth tightened in annoyance, but he knew when he was beat. Without a direct order from the Admiralty - or from the Pentagon - he could not override the Doctor. He glanced at his watch.

"Okay, if he's not up by 11:00 hours tomorrow, then you wake him."

****

He was in the cab, staring across a few feet of water into the blue eyes of Virgil Brigman and that bitch of a wife. His anger was white hot, but he knew he had completed his mission, the warhead had been delivered. Now, it was only a matter of time before the nuclear explosion destroyed whatever enemy was down there. A strange sensation crept over him, taking away the anger and leaving him feeling confused and concerned.

Have I done the right thing?

He felt the cab jolt beneath him as the edge of the abyss started to crumble under the combined weight of both cabs, his eyes locking with Brigman's in sudden realization. His gaze was torn away from Brigman's as his cab slipped over the edge, plummeting into the darkness below. He fought with the controls, trying, desperately, to restart the engines. A fire came to life behind him, but he still had the presence of mind to grab the extinguisher from its bracket and douse the flames before they consumed all the oxygen in the cab. As he looked forward he heard a grating noise, saw the dome start to crack. He screamed as the dome imploded, water gushing into the cab as the walls seemed to crumple in around him, and then... nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

No... not nothing. There was something. There was something in the cab with him. He could feel it's presence all around him, but he couldn't see it, couldn't breathe. Water. He was surrounded by water, but the water was warm, and still he was drowning in the darkness.

Wasn't he?

Lights ahead of him; purple, blue... brilliant white. A sense of something huge spread out before him. The water had filled his lungs. The oxygen should have been exhausted from his body and yet he could almost believe he was still breathing. Was he drowning? Was he dying?... Was he dead?

Is this heaven?

Angels floated around him, their diaphanous wings rippling, their large, liquid eyes watching him mournfully - as if he were about to be banished to Hell.

Am I going to Hell?

They touched him, touched his thoughts and he jerked in pain; then they pulled away. The water moved aside, like a curtain being drawn back and he felt the oxygenated liquid in his lungs pour out like a living entity. He dragged gaseous oxygen back into his lungs, a wracking cough doubling him over until he had regained control of his breathing. Coffey stared at the angels that still floated behind the curtain of water, watching him... and then everything went black.

Something woke him. He pushed onto his feet and was nudged forward by the approaching water. Ahead of him he could see a light, so reminiscent of daylight, but that was impossible. He was in the Abyss, thousands of feet below sea level.

Am I dreaming?

Virgil Brigman was moving towards him, a reassuring smile plastered to his face.

Am I dreaming?

Brigman reached out to him.

"Am I dreaming?"

"Do you want to be?"

Yes. He wanted this all to be a dream. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare, wanted to believe that he was lying asleep in his bunk waiting for orders for another mission, or maybe he was on shoreleave lying on some tropical beach with the water lapping at his feet. He didn't want to feel the paranoia that crawled through his brain like some burrowing insect; he didn't want to fall into an abyss of insanity... and he didn't want to die.

With a gasp, Coffey sat up, staring around the small infirmary.

"About time you woke, Lieutenant."

"Where am I?"

"Safely on-board a navy vessel."

"My team?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you anymore, Lieutenant. Your commander has been, rather impatiently, waiting for you to wake up. He has a debriefing scheduled in two hours. I suggest you use that time to gather your thoughts and grab something to eat... after I've checked you over."

"Yes, sir."

Gather my thoughts? Do I have any thoughts to gather?

He tried to think back to his last mission, but it was all so confusing. Snatches of memory came back to him, but it was all so tangled up with the strange nightmare. How was he supposed to unravel the reality from the dream?

****

The debriefing was as confusing as his memories of the past week. For a start, there were several people present who would not normally sit in on a debriefing, and these strangers were asking the weirdest questions, as if they knew all about his dreams.

"Lieutenant. How can I put this?"

The man who had introduced himself as Martin Stokes steepled his fingers in front of his face, pressing them against his lips. Although his eyes were on him, Coffey could tell the man's thoughts were focused inwards. Eventually, Stokes pulled the fingers away with a sigh.

"We are fully aware that you may have been suffering from pressure sickness during this mission. And we are also aware that you *may* feel... that your memory of events are foggy, perhaps even a little strange, or suspect. I want you to start again from the top, and this time, I want you to tell us everything, no matter how inconsequential; no matter how weird."

Coffey licked suddenly dry lips. He reached up and stroked a finger through his mustache as he contemplated the man's words. Taking a deep breath, he started from the top; the call from command, the helicopter ride with the outspoken Lindsey Brigman; the descent to the Deep Core platform.

He recounted the first time he noticed that his hands were shaking, but he put it down to having just spent eight hours decompression time, stuck in the chamber with that woman bitching at them as if they had any choice in what they had to do. By the time the Deep Core team had opened the door he was almost ready to kill her.

From then on the memories became erratic; he heard things that didn't make sense, assigned them an identity his brain could cope with; Russian attack subs.

Coffey focused back on the faces, expecting to see surprise; expecting to see sideways glances that questioned his sanity. Instead, they seemed completely serious, hanging on to his every word. He swallowed hard as he told them about the water with a life of its own, how it had sought out the warhead he had been arming; how he had become convinced that it had been sent to spy on them.

As he talked, he found himself being startled by his own descent into madness.

He related how he had dreamed he had been slicing into his own flesh with his knife; how he had come close to shooting Lindsey Brigman when she confronted him over the warhead they had been ordered to remove from the downed submarine; how he had pulled the trigger on Brigman at point blank range only to find the clip empty.

Finally, he told them the rest of the nightmare; the fight between the cabs as he primed the warhead and sent it on its journey; of his slide into the Abyss... He told them of the warm water that surrounded him when he imagined the dome had cracked, carrying him deeper and deeper into the darkness. He spoke of dying, of going to heaven... of sadness on the faces of angels.

"But, that was just a dream... a nightmare. Look."

He rolled up the sleeve covering his left arm to show the unmarked flesh, unaware that the surviving members of his team had already told them about the self-inflicted slash marks on Coffey's forearm; thereby confirming the previous existence of those marks.

Stokes nodded, thoughtfully.

"Tell me more about these... angels."

Coffey frowned.

"We realize you believe it was all just a nightmare, but we would like to hear what you thought you saw, what you felt."

Why does he want to know about my dreams? Coffey's eyes hardened as an explanation came to him. He's a psychiatrist. He's conducting an interview to see if I've lost it.

Stokes sighed, rubbing a hand across his face, as he saw Coffey's face harden with renewed, but understandable, paranoia.

"Okay. Time we gave *you* some information. Jack?"

"I don't think this is wise..."

Stokes held up a hand in warning to the Doctor.

The room darkened and an image appeared on the TV screen. Coffey watched highlights of the world sliding to the edge of it's own abyss; to the brink of war. Then he saw the great tsunami's that towered hundreds of feet into the sky, roll towards the shores of every continent, watched them appear to freeze before slowly flowing back until the seas were left calm once more.

He gasped as the next image came to the screen; the purple towers, the stranded ships... and himself, collapsing into Virgil Brigman's arms.

"No. It was just a dream. It was *just* a dream."

The image faded; the lights were raised. Coffey turned frightened green eyes upon the men seated in front of him. The doctor had risen to his feet.

"Enough for today. No more questions."

The doctor came forward and sank to his haunches beside the confused man, grateful when no-one countermanded his order this time.

Coffey found himself being helped to his feet and led out of the debriefing room. He hardly noticed, nor cared, when he was stripped and placed back into a bed in the infirmary. Within seconds of his head touching the pillow, he was deeply asleep, assisted by the sedative that he had not even felt being administered.

 

He awoke to the sound of three different sets of voices arguing softly above him. He recognized all three; the doctor, his SEAL commander and the man from the debriefing. Coffey listened in as the doctor outlined his theories.

"They may have altered his brain chemistry; to counteract the psychosis and to negate the need for decompression. And they must have healed the cuts on his arm..."

His commander interjected.

"We have statements from the two surviving members of his Team and from the civilians confirming this self-mutilation."

"However, it seems they couldn't alter his memories."

Martin Stokes responded, his voice agitated.

"This is what we were hoping. So *what* is the problem?"

"The problem *is*... he is reliving those memories, seeing how his behavior became ever more irrational, ever more psychotic but, until now, those memories had no basis in fact. He's just discovered that the nightmare, for want of a better word, was reality. Now he needs time to come to terms with that before we can move forward."

"How much time will he need?"

"I don't know."

"The rest of the World delegates arrive in less than 3 hours. The Ambassador needs to know more about these creatures before..."

Once more, Coffey heard the doctor come to his defense.

"Virgil Brigman had greater contact with them, and he's gone over his encounter a hundred times..."

"But Brigman is not a soldier. He doesn't have a soldier's instincts for assessing a potential enemy..."

"They don't have to be our enemy."

The three men turned towards the bed to find Lieutenant Coffey staring at them, his softly spoken words still hanging in the air. Coffey gazed at the man from the debriefing, the one who had asked most of the questions, as Stokes asked yet another.

"Why do you say that?"

The lieutenant stared long and hard at Stokes before answering.

"Because they let me live. I tried to destroy them. They had every right to leave me to die, but they saved me... and they brought me back."

"That doesn't mean they're friendly..."

Coffey turned away for a moment, closing his eyes as he remembered the strange sensation of having his mind turned inside out by the alien creatures. They had entered his mind in anger, their thoughts like white hot daggers driven into the core of his being. They had delved through every moment of his life; making known their disgust at each death he had caused during his navy career, finding no justification for his actions.

You have killed too!

He had stabbed back at them, images of the dead he had encountered on the downed submarine searing along the mind link they had formed, but they had felt no remorse for those deaths. What were Humans to them but a destructive force of nature; like a plague of locust. What they had wanted to know was if he was acting on orders. They wanted to know if they had been discovered; if the attack against them was premeditated; a dishonorable declaration of war between their two races.

All this had happened in seconds, but as he sifted through the remnants of what he had believed to be a nightmare, Coffey realized that they had recognized the change in him; had seen the brain damage caused by the increased pressure, and they had discovered that he had acted alone in his paranoia.

"They have no great animosity towards us. They just want to be left alone; that's why they didn't save those men on the sub. It was *my* actions that changed the balance; *my* attempt to destroy them that forced them to rise up against us."

Coffey shook his head as the memory of those few seconds of contact became, suddenly, so clear.

"They had no intention of saving me; they just wanted to know *why* I did what I did - and then they were going to leave me to die."

He looked back up at the Ambassador's Aide, a deadly serious expression on his face.

"I don't know what made them decide not to squash me like some irritating bug, but the fact that I'm here tells me they have decided to value at least *this* human life."

****

Coffey learned, much later, that he owed his continued existence as much to Bud Brigman as to the aliens who had rescued him from the imploding cab. He discovered that it was Brigman's noble act of self-sacrifice, his one-way trip to disarm the bomb and save the aliens, that had saved them all.

He re-watched the broadcast of human and alien making first 'political' contact, and then he glanced around the small apartment that had been his home these past few years. Reaching over, he picked up a piece of paper from the top of the nearby cabinet - his official release documents. He was going home.

The events of that day had changed his whole world, had altered his perspective on so many things. Just like the aliens, he could no longer justify the killing. All his career he had believed he was doing it for the greater good; for his country, for freedom. Now, it all seemed so hollow. His only recourse was to resign his commission, to join a different force; one that didn't care what colour a person's skin was, what god they believed in or what land - or planet - they came from. It would take a great deal of retraining, but he believed, fully, that he would be accepted by one of the civilian organizations.

He smiled.

Perhaps the Forestry services. I always did like trees.

The smile became a grin as a re-run of Baywatch started on the television. That was one organization he had no intention of applying for. He had seen enough of the sea to last him a lifetime.

THE END


End file.
